1933 was a year of critical importance to the international labour movement. Hitler was in power in Germany: the most powerful organised working class movement outside the Soviet Union had been crushed, almost without resistance. This was not due to a lack of combativity of the masses but because they were hamstrung by the leaderships of their traditional organisations, the Social Democrat and Communist (Stalinist) Parties, both of which had abandoned the revolutionary road to power for ‘victory’ through the ballot box. This traumatic historic event brought about a re-thinking of the role of the International Left Opposition, the small group of revolutionary Marxists who had gathered around Leon Trotsky in the years since his exile from the Soviet Union in 1929.

Previously the Left Opposition had seen its role as an opposition to Stalinist policies within the Communist International: against the growing bureaucratism of the apparatus; against the ultra-leftist ‘Third Period’ which adopted Stalin’s aphorism that ‘Social Democracy and Fascism were not antipodes but twins’; which rejected the Leninist tactic of the united front, the only effective weapon for defeating the forward march of Fascism.

The decision to call for the Fourth International was not taken lightly. In March 1933, Trotsky wrote to the International Secretariat of the Left Opposition in which he put forward the need for a new Communist Party in Germany. ‘German Stalinism,’ he wrote, ‘is collapsing now, less from the blows of the fascists than from its internal rottenness. Just as a doctor does not leave a patient who still has a breath of life, we had for our task the reform of the party as long as there was at least hope. But it would be criminal to tie oneself to a corpse. The KPD today represents a corpse.’ For Trotsky, the abject surrender of the powerful German Communist Party could only be compared to the betrayal by the German Social Democrats in August 1914, which heralded the collapse of the Second International.

But if Trotsky was calling for a new Communist Party in Germany in March 1933, he was by no means in a hurry to extend this diagnosis to the Communist International as a whole. In reply to the rhetorical question, ‘Do we break immediately with the Third International as a whole? Do we break with them immediately?”, he replied that it would be incorrect to give a rigid answer. ‘The collapse of the KPD’, he wrote, ‘diminishes the chances for the regeneration of the Comintern. But on the other hand the catastrophe itself could provoke a healthy reaction in some of the sections. We must be ready to help in this process… We are calling today for the creation of a new party in Germany, to seize the Comintern from the hands of the Stalinist bureaucracy. It is not a question of the creation of the Fourth International but of salvaging the Third.

By July 1933 the situation had changed. The 13th Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI), had met in Moscow and assessed the lessons of the German events. Its conclusion, in the words of Piatnitsky, then Secretary of the Comintern, was that the policy of the German party had been, ‘correct before, during and after the victory of Hitler’. It also concluded that, ‘even now Social Democracy remained the main prop of the bourgeoisie.’ To Trotsky and the Left Opposition it was now clear that as an international revolutionary organisation, the Stalinist Comintern was dead. It could no longer serve as the general staff of the world revolution, the purpose for which it had been created by Lenin and Trotsky after the October Revolution.

The demise of the Stalinist-led Communist International had, of course, been foreseen by the International Left Opposition unless it could succeed in wrenching the Comintern from its disastrous course. The LO’s criticism was almost wholly constructive. Against the policies of Stalinism it put forward concrete alternatives. They were summarised in the 11 Point Programme adopted by the international pre-conference of the Left Opposition which met in Paris in February 1933. The preamble emphasised that, ‘The International Left Opposition stands on the ground of the first four congresses of the Comintern (and) in accordance with the spirit and the sense of the decisions of the first four congresses, and in continuation of these decisions, the Left Opposition establishes the following principles, develops them theoretically, and carries them through practically:

‘1. The independence of the proletarian party, always and under all conditions; condemnation of the policy towards the Kuomintang in 1924-28; condemnation of the policy of the Anglo-Russian Committee; condemnation of the Stalinist theory of two-class (worker and peasant) parties¹ and of the whole practice based on this theory; condemnation of the policy of the Amsterdam Congress², by which the Communist Party was dissolved in the pacifist swamp.

2. Recognition of the international and thereby of the permanent character of the proletarian revolution; rejection of the theory of socialism in one country and of the policy of national Bolshevism in Germany which complements it (the platform of “national liberation”). ³

3. Recognition of the Soviet state as a workers state in spite of the growing degeneration of the bureaucratic regime; the unconditional obligation of every worker to defend the Soviet rom state against imperialism as well as against internal counter- revolution.

4. Condemnation of the economic policy of the Stalinist faction both in its stage of economic opportunism in 1923 to 1928 (struggle against “super-industrialization, staking all on the kulaks) as well as in its stage of economic adventurism in 1928 to 1932 (over-accelerated tempo of industrialisation, 100 per cent collectivisation, administrative liquidation of the kulaks as a class); condemnation of the criminal bureaucratic legend that “the Soviet state has already entered socialism”; recognition of the necessity of a return to the realistic economic policies of Leninism.

5. Recognition of the necessity of systematic Communist work in the proletarian mass organisations, particularly in the reformist trade unions; condemnation of the theory and practice of the Red trade-union organisation in Germany and similar formations in other countries.

6. Rejection of the formula of the “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry” as a separate regime distinguished from the dictatorship of the proletariat, which wins the support of the peasant and the oppressed masses in general; rejection of the anti-Marxist theory of the peaceful “growing over” of the democratic dictatorship into the socialist one.

7. Recognition of the necessity to mobilise the masses under transitional slogans corresponding to the concrete situation in each country, and particularly under democratic slogans insofar as it is a question of struggle against feudal relations, national oppression, or different varieties of openly imperialist dictatorship (fascism, Bonapartism, etc).

8. Recognition of the necessity of a developed united front policy with respect to the mass organisations of the working class, both of trade unions and of a political character, including Social Democracy as a party; condemnation of the ultimatistic slogan “only from below”, which in practice means a rejection of the united front and, consequently, a refusal to create soviets; condemnation of the opportunistic application of the united-front policy as in the Anglo-Russian Committee (a bloc with the leaders without the masses and against the masses); double condemnation of the policy of the present German Central Committee, which combines the ultimatistic slogan of “only from below” with the opportunistic practice of parliamentary pacts with the leaders of Social Democracy.

9. Rejection of the theory of social fascism and of the entire practice bound up with it as serving fascism on the one hand and Social Democracy on the other.

10. Differentiation of three groupings within the camp of communism: the Marxist, the centrist, and the right; recognition of the impermissibility of a political alliance with the right against centrism; support of centrism against the class enemy; irreconcilable and systematic struggle against centrism and its zigzag policies.⁴

’11. Recognition of party democracy not only in words but also in fact; ruthless condemnation of the Stalinist plebiscitary regime (the rule of the usurpers, gagging the thought of the party, deliberate suppression of information from the party, etc. (All emphases in original)’.

Thus, before he left his exile in July 1933, Trotsky issued the definitive call for a new, Fourth International. (It is Necessary to Build Communist Parties and an International Anew). This call was taken up by two leftward moving centrist parties-the SAP (Socialist Workers Party) of Germany and the OSP (Independent Socialist Party) of Holland. A fourth signatory to the Declaration of Four (see Appendix), was Henk Sneevliet, the veteran Dutch revolutionary socialist, on behalf of his Revolutionary Socialist Party.

The SAP speedily sank back into the morass of centrism and the London Bureau, spearheaded by the British Independent Labour Party (ILP). The two Dutch parties, which merged, remained faithful to the idea of the Fourth International but developed important differences with Trotsky and the Left Opposition, especially during the Spanish Civil War when Sneevliet gravitated toward the POUM. Sneevliet was ed to death by the Nazis during the German occupation of Holland during the war. He and his comrades died heroically. Facing the firing squad with clenched fists, their last words were ‘Long Live the International’.

Not even all who had supported the Left Opposition in its decade and a half struggle against Stalinism, agreed on the need for a new international. Chief of these was Isaac Deutscher. who wrote: ‘The idea that new impulses for revolution come from the West but not from the Soviet Union was the leitmotif of Trotsky’s advocacy of the Fourth International. Again and again he asserted that while in the Soviet Union Stalinism continued to play a dual role, at once progressive and retrograde, it exercised internationally only a counter-revolutionary influence. Here his grasp of reality failed him. Stalinism was to go on acting its dual role internationally as well as nationally: it was to stimulate as well as to obstruct the class struggle outside the Soviet Union. In any case it was not from the West that the revolutionary impulses were to come in the next three or four decades. Thus the major premise on which Trotsky set out to create the Fourth International was unreal.’⁵

Deutscher’s influence was responsible for the two Polish delegates voting against the foundation of the Fourth International at its founding conference in 1938. In effect, his position was that of the radical middle class intellectuals, who were critical of Stalinism but sceptical of the need to build an alternative revolutionary party of the working class.

Trotsky answered them: ‘Let the disillusioned ones bury their own dead. The working class is not a corpse. As hitherto, society rests upon it. It needs a new leadership. It will find this nowhere but in the Fourth International. All that is rational is real. Social democracy and Stalinocracy today represent stupendous fictions. But the Fourth International is an impregnable reality.’⁶

Deutscher was not alone in his scepticism. Centrists and quite a few faint hearts in our own ranks expressed their doubts about the advisability of establishing a new international. Arguments were not wanting. The revolutionary Marxist movement was too isolated; the consciousness of the masses had not yet developed to the point where they realised the betrayals of the traditional leadership, especially of Stalinism; we must wait for more favourable conditions and not fall into the error of ‘artificially’ establishing an international.

To those doubters, the answer was given at the founding congress of the Fourth International in 1938. The failure of the traditional leaderships had resulted in the historical defeats of the working class in Germany in 1933, in Spain and France 1936-38. These defeats had brought no reactions from the leaderships of the Social Democrats or the Stalinists to indicate that they had learned anything. There was no possibility of reconciling our programme with that of the architects of these defeats. Finally, our existence as a revolutionary current which had fought bitterly, under the most adverse conditions, for a Bolshevik-Leninist programme was an historical fact. Our existence was an objective consequence which would, from now on, influence the developments of events.

The Fourth International arose as an international movement against the traditional workers’ leaderships out of the development of the international class struggle as it existed before the Second World War. From the standpoint of its ideas, its programme and ideology, as well as from its cadres, the Fourth International was the result of objective developments within the labour movement. In no way could it be said to be an ‘artificial’ creation. Its conjunctural isolation from the masses cannot be used as an argument against its establishment. Revolutionary Marxists have long ago understood the dialectic of the relationship between classes, parties and leadership. Only at rare moments in history, at the peak of revolutionary development, is there a fusion between these elements. The changing dynamic of the class struggle continuously loosens these elements and binds them together again.

The party itself is an integral part of the class, but it differentiates itself from the class by the fact that it has a higher conception of the historic role of the class struggle than the class as a whole. The programme, the doctrine, tightly related to the actual class struggle-this is the work of the party and not of the class as a whole. What is important is that a revolutionary movement, at a given moment, and not leading a great mass movement of the class can defend, through its cadres, its ideology and programme and its continuity with the revolutionary past. Despite the most adverse objective conditions, the Fourth International has passed this test.

Since the end of the war, we have seen successful socialist revolutions in many countries (China, Yugoslavia, Cuba, Vietnam, etc.) led by currents outside the Fourth International. These revolutions, in the words of Ernest Mandel, were headed by ‘pragmatic revolutionary leaderships that had a revolutionary practice but a theory and programme that was adequate neither to their own revolution, nor especially to the world revolution… they do not have an adequate overall programme for constructing a socialist world…’ One of the most blatant omissions of these leaderships, is their failure to recognise the need for political revolution in the degenerated workers states.

The Fourth International has such an overall programme. It is the living continuation of the best traditions of Lenin’s Third International. This programme is needed, not only by the workers and toiling masses who still have to overthrow the rule of their oppressors, but also in those countries where the dictatorship of the proletariat is living proof of the theory of permanent revolution.

Footnotes

1. Two-class ‘workers and peasants’ parties’ was a formula used by the Stalinists in the 1920s to justify support of the Kuomintang and other bourgeois parties in Asia. ↩︎
2. An international congress against war, initiated by the Stalinists in Amsterdam in 1932. ↩︎
3. The German Stalinists developed an agitation for the ‘national liberation’ of Germany in order to compete with the Nazis as champions of German nationalism in opposition to the oppressive Versailles Treaty. Only the Nazis benefited from the competition. ↩︎
4. The following year point 10 was amended in the light of the Comintern’s refusal to draw the lessons of the victory of fascism in Germany. Reflecting the conclusion that it was now no longer possible to reform the Comintern, point 10 now read: ‘The struggle for the regrouping of the revolutionary forces of the world’s working class under the banner of International Communism. Recognition of the necessity of the creation of a genuine Communist International capable of applying the principles enumerated above.’ The ‘centrist’ grouping within the camp of communism was applied to the faction led by Stalin as against the ‘right’ of Bukharin/Brandler and the ‘left’ Trotskyists. ↩︎
5. Deutscher, The Prophet Outcast, p. 212. ↩︎
6. Trotsky, Writings 1938-39, р. 145 ↩︎